


We Will Not Remain Ashes

by Hadrian_Pendragons



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Based on recent chapters, Gen, Protective Older Brothers, Rin is kinda an unreliable narrator, Rin-centric, exploration of how he sees/feels before most recent events, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27334924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hadrian_Pendragons/pseuds/Hadrian_Pendragons
Summary: Rin is the older brother, no matter how many people have said Yukio acts like the eldest.It's his responsibility to bring Yukio back.
Relationships: Okumura Rin & Okumura Yukio
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21
Collections: Fic In A Box





	We Will Not Remain Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morphogenesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morphogenesis/gifts).



> Contains:  
> Fanart/Cover of Fic: 1 image  
> Fanfic: 1148 Words

Rin could never tell what Yukio was thinking. 

If he thought hard enough, he might be able to pinpoint the gap between them. The first moment the divide began to break them apart. The moment Yukio went from crying and running to him over scraped knees and the sudden—gradual, but sudden—change in which Yukio stopped crying at all. 

But if he were honest, it didn’t need that much effort to find out exactly where it began. Not after everything he had already witnessed. 

It all started when they were born, and Dad dying was the straw that broke the backbone of their relationship.

He knew it all, now. He knew the struggle they put their mother through just to protect the sons the world saw as the enemy. He knew how much she loved them despite. He knew Father Fujimoto took them in and raised them like real sons. That both their mother and their father loved them, no matter where they were in time. 

Rin felt himself well up with a tangle of unexplainable emotion. It rooted itself in his heart—the one inside of him, the one he knew was _his,_ was _human,_ not the demonic beating pulling at the seams of his skin—and it planted itself firmly in his ribcage, struggling to be set free.

Rin bundled it up tight. Protected it firmly. It wasn’t something he could let out just yet. 

Right alongside the decade of hurt—and what hurt the most wasn’t anything Yukio had done. It was the fact that for the entirety of their childhood and middle school years, for a lot of their high school life, while Yukio had been struggling and hurting and angry… _Rin hadn’t noticed._

 _It’s impossible to know what someone’s thinking unless they tell you._ He would tell anyone else. 

_How could you not notice something so horribly damaging to your own brother?_ He instead asked himself.

Yukio was strong. He was kind. He wanted to help people. 

Rin had imagined his little brother growing up and finishing school and wearing one of those white coats, his name on a diploma hanging on a wall, tending to injuries like he always tended to Rin’s.

Strong, kind, helping people. 

Someone who didn’t need a hopeless case like his flunkie older brother—a brother that couldn’t hold down a job to save his life, that always messed everything up, that couldn’t control his temper and was probably the worst role model, that caused so, so much trouble for his family—to succeed in life. 

Rin had been proud of him. Accepted that Yukio was doing just fine on his own. Hadn’t bothered to look deeper. 

He didn’t question where Yukio went off to while he was at daycare centers and elementary school. Yukio was working hard to be something amazing, and Rin was _so proud of him._ He would find something he could do, too. That way Yukio could work hard and not worry about him. 

Maybe Rin had worried him too much, anyway. Maybe Rin hadn’t let Yukio worry about him enough.

Maybe Rin shouldn’t have assumed that just because Yukio was smiling, everything would be okay.

Now nothing was okay, and he beat himself up over how _blind_ he had been. 

He hadn’t seen the pain in Yukio’s eyes. He hadn’t noticed the terror. He hadn’t noticed the hate. He hadn’t _noticed._

Would he know what to say?

If he stood face to face with him, _finally_ honest with one another, would Rin know what to say?

Explain? Tell him what he knew now? _Apologize?_

_I’m sorry your big brother’s so dumb, Yukio._

_I should have asked. I should have listened._

And what if Yukio didn’t want to listen?

Rin—didn’t know his brother.

Yukio was strong.

But he was also alone, and had been for a long time.

Which is exactly why Rin couldn’t hesitate.

He was hesitating, now—in the time between one place and another, in between one battle and the next, suspended between the past and the present. He was hesitating and thinking a lot harder about the next step than he ever had before. He couldn’t bring himself to run haphazardly into this, like he had for everything else before. It wasn’t just himself in danger here. It was his friends, and his _brother._

His _family._

_The only family he had left._

What would be waiting for him, when he managed to find his way to Yukio?

Rin wanted to tell him everything. He wanted to apologize.

But Yukio would want to fight.

Rin didn’t know his brother, but he didn’t have to be a genius like Yukio to know what that last look they had exchanged meant.

This was a fight. A big one. One that could rip them apart.

Rin didn’t want to lose Yukio. So he would have to fight his brother. Point his sword at him and stare down the barrel of his gun for the third time in his life. Yukio really had wanted to shoot him, hadn’t he? How long had he been holding back?

He took a deep breath.

He didn’t have much longer to think.

The time for pause had been ripped away from him when his father had died.

What, he wondered, had been taken from Yukio?

He regretted rushing headlong into the exorcist world. He didn’t regret his friends, and he didn’t regret everything he had learned… but he regretted not fighting Yukio earlier. Asking him what was wrong, and _making_ him answer. He regretted letting it get this far.

Maybe he had been blind. Maybe he had been scared.

Scared of losing him. Scared of pushing him away. Scared of the look in Yukio’s eyes the first day of cram school, when Yukio had pointed that gun at him. Scared of how angry he had been at his own brother, the last of his family.

Maybe if he had faced it earlier, Yukio wouldn’t be on the brink of leaving him for good.

Rin was out of time.

He took a deep breath. He would face Mephisto again. He would do anything, _anything_ to get his brother back by his side. To tell him the truth. To tell him their mother and father loved them. To remind him he wasn’t alone.

Rin wasn’t alone. He had his friends.

Yukio was alone.

But Rin was the older brother. And it was his responsibility, now, to let the hesitation go.

He had to face it. He _would_ explain it all to Yukio. And then he would apologize, and drag his brother into the biggest hug he’s never given.

_They would always have each other._

_Maybe they hadn’t, these past few years…_

_… but Rin would make certain they would for their lives to come._

And maybe save the world in there, somewhere, he belatedly reminded himself.

Wouldn’t be much of a future if there wasn’t anything left, right?


End file.
